Iris Murdoch - Bruno’s Dream

I have decided that the only way to deal with myself as I now am is to leave England. A friend has told me how I can get a job in India, with the Save the Children Fund, and I am going to Calcutta. I leave no address and I sign no name. I am a spirit that wished you well and will wish you well for however long or short a time it preserves your memory. I kiss your feet.

Danby stared at the letter. It caused him an extraordinary and novel kind of pain. He wished he had known that Nigel loved him. Yet what on earth would he have done about it? Would he have acted that “hateful part”? Yes, what a trouble maker it was. Every manjack craving for love, and how rarely it all worked out. Nigel loved Danby who loved Lisa who loved-How sad and crazy it all was. Oh God, I feel so bloody lonely, he thought. The voice of love, even though it was not the right one, came to him with such an unmistakable accent out of that inaccessible real world. His eyes seemed to be filling with tears again. “Oh hell,” said Danby aloud. He shook the tears away and took off his jacket and his tie. Better go to bed and drown all this self-pity in decent oblivion. Misery and drink made him a sound sleeper. He stood for a moment listening to the rain, which had grown fiercer and listening to the wind, which was rattling the windowpane. He undid the front of his shirt.

Suddenly there was a strange sharp regular noise very close to him. Danby stood paralyzed, clutching his shirt. In a moment the sound came again, loud and several times repeated. Someone was tapping urgently upon the window. Will! Danby thought, it’s Will for sure, come to do me properly. He stood perfectly still. The tapping came again, insistent, demanding, violent. He’ll break the glass in a minute, thought Danby. Whatever shall I do? Call the police? Pretend not to be here? Can he see me through the chink in the curtain? Oh God, why did this have to happen. Danby felt tired and old. He wanted to go to bed. He did not want to be forced to fight with a half-crazy young man. It was all ridiculous. He called out, “Who’s there?” There was no answer, only the tapping on the window, once more repeated, fierce and sharp. Danby hesitated. Then he moved silently out of the room and into the kitchen. He picked up a long carving knife and then laid it down again. He returned and went up to the window. “Who is it?” Tap, tap, tap, tap. Danby pulled back the curtains. He could not see out into the darkness and the rain. Then he violently pulled up the sash of the window and re treated across the room.

At once a long leg with an extremely muddy shoe appeared over the window ledge. But it was a woman’s leg. “Help me, would you?” said Lisa.

Danby closed the window and pulled the curtain again. Lisa was sitting on the bed. She had taken off her mackintosh and was removing her shoes. Her hair, which had been un covered, was plastered to her head and curled in wet arabesques down her neck.

She said, “I’m sorry to come in this way and I wouldn’t have done so if I’d known how much mud I would bring in with me. I didn’t like to ring the bell because of Bruno. Would you mind getting me a towel?”

Danby went to the kitchen and returned with a towel. She began to dry her face and hair. Danby stood by the window, leaning on the chest of drawers, staring with his mouth open. An extreme pain, passing up the centre of his body like a white-hot rod, kept him clenched and rigid.

”I’m sorry to arrive unannounced,” said Lisa. She had rubbed her hair into a mass of rather frizzy small ringlets which she was now trying to smooth down. “Could I borrow your comb?”

Danby, moving gingerly because of the pain, handed her the comb, leaning stiffly. His teeth had begun to chatter and he closed his mouth grinding his teeth together.

Lisa was combing her hair. It was difficult. “What a stormy night,” she said. “Oh God!” said Danby. “Oh Christ!”

”Do sit down, Danby. Sit on that chair by the window, would you? How is Bruno?”

Danby sat down, still stiffly. The pain made him groan. He put his hands to his face and groaned again. He said in a low stumbling voice, “Why are you here?”

”I said how is Bruno?”

”All right. No, dying. But quiet, okay. Why are you here?”

”I will explain,” said Lisa. “And I must begin with an apology. It might have been better to write to you. But I have been a long time in a great deal of doubt and when things at last became clear I found that I wanted to see you at once and to, as I say, explain.” She spoke rather coldly, staring at him and still combing her hair.

”You don’t know what you’ve done,” said Danby.

”Not yet. But a little time will show.”

”I mean, coming to see me like this. It makes it all a thou sand times worse. There’s nothing to explain. I wasn’t complaining. I wasn’t even looking for you. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do. I’ve just got to suffer it. Oh God, I wish you hadn’t come!”

”I’m afraid you’ll have to undergo the explanation,” she said. “It is necessary-for me.”

”There isn’t any explanation!” said Danby. “I just love you like a crazy fool. Anybody can love anybody. The worthless can love the good. A cat can look at a king, queen, princess, angel. I’ve just got to grit my teeth and sit it out. I don’t want your sympathy or your bloody explanations!”

Lisa was looking at him with a frowning faintly curious look, her mouth pouting as if with a slight disgust. Her face was a glowing pink after her exertions with the towel. Her hair, which she had finished combing and smoothing back, curled damply down her neck, blackened by the rain. She pulled up one wet stockinged foot and tucked it under her, arranging the pillows behind her back against the wall. When she had made herself comfortable she said, “Now I want you to listen.”

”I’m inclined to tell you to go,” said Danby. He felt something curiously like anger.

”No. You would find yourself incapable of that, I think.”

She’s right, he thought. Oh God, oh God, why do I have to endure this?

”I am going to talk, and I may ask you some questions,” said Lisa. “I want to start with a question. When you came that night to Kempsford Gardens Miles told you I was in love with somebody. Do you know who that person is?”

”The person you’re in love with? No.”

”It’s Miles.”

Danby looked at the floor. He leaned slowly forward with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He thought, I simply mustn’t start crying. If I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. Miles. Miles . He was silent.

”I’m sorry,” said Lisa. “I know this hurts you but it’s necessary. I have been and am in love with Miles. I fell in love with him when I first met him, on the day of his marriage with Diana. I loved him all through those years and I imagined that I would never let him know it.”

Danby was silent, pressing his hands into his eyes.

”Quite recently however he found out, or rather I told him. I ought not to have done so, but it was very difficult not to, psychologically difficult I mean, because by then he had fallen in love with me.”

Danby was silent.

”I don’t know how long he has loved me,” Lisa went on in the same cool precise even voice. “He imagines that it has been a long time. But my own guess is that he only really fell in love quite lately.”

Danby lifted his head. There were tears and he did not try to conceal them. “God blast you, why are you torturing me with this damned love story?”

”It is necessary to make this quite clear. I love Miles and he loves me.”

”Oh get out, will you,” said Danby.

”However,” said Lisa, paying no attention to the interruption, “the fact remained that Miles was married to Diana.”